[0.5.5] Giga Bonk Martial Artist - Falling Thunder Monk - League Starter to Endgame

Here's my guide for my Giga Bonk League Starter and Endgame Build for Patch 0.5.5! This is a Work in Progress so expect rapid changes early on! I've included Leveling Variants and Budget Variants, just scroll through the Variants!

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🚨Work in Progress, be sure to come by the Twitch Stream for the Newest Skill Tree and Gems as I'm changing it to test new things!🚨

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🚨I've included a League Starter Leveling Guide, Early Mapping Guide, and Endgame Guide to cover your run on Monk from Start to Finish. Click the appropriate Tab for Gear and the Passive Tree🚨

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New Power Charge Tech Here

In the Endgame, we'll use Shattering Palm + Living Lightning II + Culmination II + Ailith's Chimes to generate TONS of Power Charges on Hit! We'll hit a target with Shattering Palm, this will trigger Living Lightning II minions which will expend built Combo when h itting targets thanks to the Martial Master node. This combo is then consumed by Ailith's Chimes for Power Charges. Simply enter map, press Shattering Palm a couple times and you have Charges!

We'll use these Power Charges with Falling Thunder + Nova Projectiles II for 360° Clear! This will be our main Bossing and Mapping Skill. Bonk with Falling Thunder, then recharge your Charges with 1 press of Shattering Palm on enemies, then bonk again!

The new Way of the Stonefist Ascendancy Node will allow our Gloves to be transformed into new and stronger versions of themselves! This will provide things like Explode Corpses for Damage, Onslaught on Hit, +% to Crit Chance, and More!

We'll also use Martial Adept + Martial Master to build up Combo from ALL our hits and twice as fast. For every 1 Combo we consume, we reduce our Energy Shield Recharge Rate by 0.2 seconds, so 10 combo consumed = -2 seconds before ES Recharge starts. We spam Combo skill so CONSTANT ES recharge!

Our Defenses were Buffed in 0.5 with Deflection and Evasion getting some MASSIVE improvements. We'll be around 6K Energy Shield, 77% Evasion, and 95% Deflect on top of Chaos Immunity with Chaos Inoculation and Instant ES recovery with Shavronne's Satchel + Ultimate Life Flask with Instant Recovery. We'll also have a Companion with Spirit Vessel from the Forgotten Warden Body Armor. This Companion will eat 10% of Damage taken and 15% of Deflected Hit Damage for a massive Damage Reduction!

Filter's I use (Shoutout Mr9Lives) - Here

Act 1 Regex - "i.+mov|^ad.*ph.*da|^\d.*ph.*da|^\+.*ills$|lacquered|studded|co.+res"

Act 2 Regex - "li.+res|^\+.*ills$|i.+mov|nymph's|o-wisp's|sylph's|\d [cfl].+da"

Act 3 Regex - "i.+mov|resi|^\+.*ills$|\d [cfl].+da|nymph's|sylph's|cherub's"

Act 4 Regex - "i.+mov|resi|^\+.*ills$|\d [cfl].+da|^\d.*ph.*da|^ad.*ph.*da|nymph's|sylph's|cherub's"

See YT Videos!

FAQ

How to Scale my Crit Chance and how much is enough?

Your Base Critical Hit Chance is the most important thing to improve. The Sinister Quarterstaff has a Base Crit Chance of 12%, which is the highest of any Quarterstaff Base. This Base + the mod " +% to Crit Chance) can provide up to a 17% Base Critical Hit Chance.

The Way of the Stonefist converts the Critical Damage Bonus mod to "+% to Crit Chance) as well, meaning we can get an additional 3% to Base Critical Hit Chance. Otherwise things like the Time-Lost Sapphire with Crit Chance, other Jewels, Passive Tree Nodes, etc.... will be your other sources of Crit. You can also utilize the Diamond Flask on Mageblood or Pinpoint Critical in place of Blindside if absoluetly necessary.

The Blindside support will provide 15% More Critical Hit Chance against blinded enemies, which is why we run Blind II in Herald of Ice and Charged Staff. This will ensure most targets we hit will be blinded and give us the bonus. However, this 15% More does not show up in our Tooltip since its Conditional. Same applies for our Daze Effects like Stupefy and Dizzying Hits. The minumum Crit Chance on tooltip in hideout with 0 buffs we should want to achieve is around 65%. Our buffs mentioned above and Charge Regulation will get us to 100% against a Blinded and Dazed Target.

Why Herald of Ice and when to swap to it?

Herald of Ice has a higher damage ceiling and better AoE than Herald of Thunder, but is harder to get to work since you have to be Freezing the targets to proc it. This is why early on, we use Herald of Thunder until you can get enough sources of Cold Damage and Freeze Buildup.

You can get these sources of Cold Damage and Freeze Buildup from your Quarterstaff with Added Cold Damage + Increased Elemental Damage with Attacks, Added Cold on Rings, Gain % Cold Damage from Heart of the Well, and Freeze Buildup on Passive Tree if needed (Thin Ice, Heavy Frost, One with the River). Breath of Aldur is also an option but it is socket bound meaning you can't change the rune once placed, only use if absolutely necessary.

Once you've gotten a large amount of Added Cold Damage, you can try swapping to Herald of Ice. If you notice you're not Freezing stuff and activating Herald of Ice, then you need some more Cold Damage or Freeze Buildup.

How to Increase Energy Shield?

The biggest sources of Energy Shield is going to come from your Body Armor (Forgotten Warden), Pure ES Helmet, and Gloves (Way of the Stonefist Mods).

Once you have a solid base Energy Shield amount, you need to get sources of Increased and More Energy Shield. These can come from the Time-Lost Sapphire and other Jewels, Amulet Mods (% Increased ES / Global Defenses), Rite of Passage (Owl Spirit), Charge Regulation (20% More ES), Passive Tree Nodes, Runes (Rune of Foundations / Perfect Iron Rune), and more.

Way of the Stonefist will convert popular Defensive mods like % Increased EV / ES / AR into % More Global Evasion and Energy Shield which is extremely potent. I would try to always have this mod on your Gloves if possible.

I can't put Ailith's Chimes / Culmination II / Charge Profusion II in Shattering Palm?

The order of the Support Gems is extremely important! You need to first equip Culmination II as it allows Shattering Palm to build combo. Now that the skill has combo associated with it, you can then slot in Ailith's Chimes since this support revolves around combo. Now that you have Ailith's Chimes which grants Power Charges, you can now equip Charge Profusion II since this support revolves around charges.

Where's Flicker Strike?

This isn't really a Flicker Strike build at this point, I've found myself barely using it and its quite finicky and expensive to feel worth using. Can still be used in place of Pounce if wanted with these supports: Concentrated Area, Perpetual Charge, Hit and Run, Blindside, Elemental Armament II

Why not run both Herald of Thunder and Herald of Ice?

Its a bit overkill in my opinion to run both Heralds, especially since I get the Explode Mods on my Gloves from the Katla's Gloom Mod Pool. I find the 30 Spirit better spent on things like Mana Remnants for Mana Sustain and Ghost Dance for ES sustain.

How do I mitigate Slows, especially in Grand Expedition?

The expensive but full proof method is the Legacy of Wanderlust which will solve all your problems, but is usually quite expensive.

The cheaper method is to stack "Reduced Potency of Slowing Debuffs". This can come from things like the Soul Core of Quipolatl, Cyclonic Alloy Body Armor Mod, and Passive Tree Nodes (Freedom of Movement, Unhindered, Lasting Boons, Unyielding, etc...).

There's also the Commiserate support which can be slotted into one of your skills like Shattering Palm to remove the Chill debuff from yourself briefly. This is a bootleg way, but better than nothing. Silver Charm can also help but will likely run out of charges fast in Grand Expeditions.

Why Forgotten Warden over a Rare Body Armor?

The Companion from the Spirit Vessel Skill granted by the Body Armor can eat up to 15% of Deflected Damage for us. Since we cap our Deflection at 95%, this means most of the time we'll take 40% Less Damage, then the Companion will eat up to 15% of Deflected Damage. This gives us an additional 15% Damage Reduction.

We also can use the Loyalty support which is an extra 10% Damage Reduction and other cool supports like Catha's Brilliance and Amanamu's Tithe.

The Base Defenses on this Body Armor are also extremely high for how easy / cheap this can be. Not to mention the tons of Deflection Rating you'll get on top of it. This Body Armor will be better than most up until you start getting into 2K+ EV 600+ ES Body Armors which will be very expensive.

Can I use Duality as a budget Quarterstaff?

No, the Finality Buff from this Quarterstaff prevents us from gaining Combo. This will brick the Power Charge generation from Ailith's Chimes!

Is Shavronne's Satchel really that good and why isn't it healing my ES on use?

YES, its absolutely insane for survivability. Spam your Flask if you trip, get swarmed, or just get low and you'll be saved. If you have a really good flask then you'll really notice how powerful this belt is.

The only requirement is to have an Instant Recovery or % of Recovery is Instant Life Flask. For some reason, when using Chaos Inoculation you have to be running one of these mods to get any recovery. Otherwise the belt is useless.

More FAQ info to be added......

9/30/26 - Added FAQ for troubleshooting, plenty more info to be added to it

9/26/26 - Updated all other Endgame Variants to match changes I made in 0.5.5. Please let me know if theres mistakes as this was a massive overhaul

9/25/26 - Updated Mirror Tier Variant, other variants will get updates soon

9/12/26 - Fixed Socketable mistake

9/10/26- Updated Atlas Tree

9/7/26 - Fixed issue with early leveling variant, added Atlas points to mirror variant

8/31/26 - Updated Leveling variant to feel a it smoother for league start. We'll utilize Hollow Form + Whirling Assault until we can drop / buy Ailith's Chimes since its kinda required to get our Endgame build up and running.

7/9/26 - Added Mirror Tier Investment Variant. This is a high skill and investment version of the build that is centered around farming the juiciest Expedition in the game. Can swap the Berserk tech for Legacy of Wanderlust if slow is too annoying.

6/27/26 - Added Tatto's since Mobalytics added support for it

6/23/26 - Updated ALL Endgame variants providing more clarity on what mods to prioritize. Updated to match Final Update changes with a video to come within a day or two.

6/20/26 - Updated descriptions, added Shark Fin Reward. Update video coming soon!

6/7/26 - Added link to new video, added new Body Armor Forgotten Warden (Cheap and OP). Updated descriptions further and corrected some typos.

6/7/26 - Added new Power Charge Tech which replaces Whirling Assault with Shattering Palm. Check the Tech out! Updated all Endgame variants to match. Added new info for Giga Invest variant revolving around Mageblood. Lots of other minor changes.

6/2/26 - Added new video going over New Power Charge Tech and the new Breachlord's Amalgam Lineage Gem. Updated Variants

6/2/26 - Did major updates to all variants to match the changes we've made due too the testing in 0.5. PoB file removed until I give it a full update, new YT video coming in a day or two to go over newest changes.